Whew! What a weekend.
Sorry I've been silent on here lately - lots of time/effort has been put into prepping for Costume College (CoCo). And it definitely paid off :).
And if you don't know what CoCo is...Wow! you mean I HAVEN'T talked your ear off about it yet? :) For more info, go here:
http://www.costumecollege.org/This year at CoCo I ran the Information Dept (Information Desk at Costume College), which was completely new for me. And, to make things MORE interesting, I decided to have a game at the Information Desk that CoCo Attendees could play. Basically, its a Wheel that you could spin, after after it stopped on a category, you answered a trivia question. Many of them were images that you had to look at and then guess the time period, the sewing tool, the movie/tv show, etc that it came from. I even had a section on Costume College trivia (past colleges/conventions). :)
Here's the full list of categories:
1. What’s my Scene? (Movies/TV Stills)
2. Say What?!? (Movies/TV Quotes)
3. Costume College Trivia
4. Sewing Tools & Equipment
5. Unmentionables (Undergarments through the ages)
6. Words of Wisdom (Helpful hints and tips provided by other costumers and some of our vendors).
7. Out of Time (Guess the Time Period)
8. Spin Again
9. Ghodfuzzy to the Rescue! (Free Choice. Player gets to choose the category.)
I had 12 segments on the wheel, so a few categories were repeated. Overall, I had a great reaction to the game, and everyone had fun (Yay!). So I'm glad I put all that work into it. Thanks go to various people for helping me build the wheel itself (vadenalim) and assemble the categories on site too (including collency, casketgirl, Maria, bygoneglamour, and others that I'm forgetting right now). Thank You!!! :)
I had 100 Name Badge Ribbons to give out to those who played the game, and by Sunday (morning) they were gone!
Information Desk itself went fairly smoothly overall. Some minor kinks that can be worked out later. I definitely have ideas for how to improve it (though some things will probably change just cause we're changing hotels next year...BIG change for us). A few holes in the schedule for covering the Info Desk (schedule is a tad harder to fill when ONLY Committee members or CGW Board of Directors can man the table, but various people stopped by and stepped up when there was a need for another body at the table. Thanks! :)
Oh, and I taught my Intro to Leather Tooling class this year, and it went Spectacularly! I could have probalby used some more time, and a few minor glitches, but nothing serious. The students had a great time (I had limited the class to a max of 10 students - all pre-registered so I knew how many to prep for) and did really well on learning the various steps of tooling leather even though we had to rush through a few stages. (They got the idea of the stage, but they could have used some more time to bevel or pear shade...mostly beveling...cause there's a LOT of beveling going on in the design...and its a good thing to practice. Lots of designs incorporate beveling). I even got requests from various students to teach this again next year (so they can bring back their projects and show me what they've been working on and how they've improved) and got a round of applause. (Yay!!! :)
I attended my 3 Limited Classes and they were all great! So very glad I got it. :) (Though I had to leave early from my first one cause I just wasn't feeling well and had to lay down/get fluids in me. I admit I am a bit dissapointed I missed out on good portion of that class, since it was a hands-on demonstration of dying different types of fabrics - something I've been interested in for a while - but I did get the handout and some samples. Plus I have some contact info for the teacher. She and I bonded a bit, too, when I drove her out on Thursday to an office supply store to get new handouts copied for her various classes since they were forgotten at home...and she was from out of state! So I'm not too worried. I can probably pick her brain later if I have questions on stuff I missed while I'm reading the handout.)
The Saturday Evening (Time Traveler's) Gala this year was fabulous! I arrived a bit late (was working on my 1930s hair with the help of my roommate, first time attendee Laura who also happens to reenacts 1940s, and it took a bit longer than anticipated to get it just right...but it was worth it. :) Sewgirljen and Becca M (my other rommates) had managed to save me a seat at a nearby table. I must say - that table was a lot of fun. It's always nice when you meet new people and you get along! Plus the "Who am I?" game did help break the ice a bit more. (Only suggestion is to play it earlier in the evening, like between one of the courses, to help the table socialize earlier).
Dancing at the Gala was a blast. Of course, we started off with the Time Warp (tradition!) and the floor was packed. Then other music kicked in and the dance floor varied between decently croweded to packed most of the night, courtesy of obishawn's great ability to read the mood of the crowd. I gotta say, that was the best selection of dance tunes at a Gala yet. (Yay! Keep it up obishawn! :) Never made it in to the Red Carpet room to get my picture taken, but oh well. Got a few pics on my camera and friends cameras...I was too busy dancing and socializing in the main room! :)
Sunday afternoon had the Tea, and I had never attended the Tea at Costume College before...and chartreusekitty was the Tea Mistress (and had put together an awesome looking tea filled with fun games and had arranged for various people to bring their teapots so the tea could actually be served in real teapots - I brought my 1 teapot for her to use :) so I decided I just had to attend! Just as the Tea was starting, and I was about to buy one of the remaining tea tickets for sale (i.e. tickets sold are ones that someone had purchased before it was Sold Out, but now the person could no longer attend so the ticket is being re-sold for original purchase price) someone handed me a ticket that an attendee could no longer use and was willing to GIVE it away (without selling it). So I took it (gratefully)! I had a great time! (I did have to duck out at 3pm so that I could cover the Information Desk...since it was a blank slot on the schedule...but then Natalie, the CGW's treasurer popped by to see how things were going and sent me back inside to finish my Tea and she covered the Desk. Thanks Natalie!!! :)
Sunday Evening was the CGW Annual Meeting...and fortunately it was under 2 hrs. Woo-Hoo! And...bonus...the various people I really wanted to get elected to the Board, and I voted for, of course, actually *got* on the Board. Yay! :)
Afterwards, a bunch of us (9 total) went over to Millies to have dinner and just be silly. We had a blast! A lot of us are/were on the Committee so we've been super busy all weekend and prior to the convention with planning/prep and the actual mayhem of CoCo. So we definitely needed some downtime. :) I gotta say that dinner (the company) was great as always! And of course, we were silly...the laughter just flowed from our table/area. Good thing we kinda had a section to ourselves! :)
Monday was packing up and making sure we got everything out of the various rooms (including conference rooms). I stayed to help collency make sure all the stuff was out of the boardroom (where committee stuff had been piled) and also helped collency and obishawn make trips of stuff to their car so they could check out of their room. Afterwards, I hung out with collency while we waited for Chaz to come by and pick up the last bit of Tea decoratations (the Arch) and we brainstormed ideas for CoCo 2010. :) We (Collency, Chaz, his Head Minion, and I) grabbed lunch at Beeps down the street...and then we all went our seperate directions.
Back to real life...and unpacking...now.
(And figuring out my receipts so I can turn in the ones for Costume College committee stuff and get reimbursed :)
